Sinkies need foreign recruitment agencies to get jobs here

The proliferation of recruitment agencies owned by foreigners is not something to be trifled with. We have crazily, under the notion of free market forces, to issue all kinds of licences to foreigners to compete against our own citizens. Insurance agencies, student recruitment agencies, housing agents, and recruitment agencies, all that can be run without much talent is given freely to foreigners. In the case of recruitment agencies, there appears to be an unwritten modus operandi, where the employers choose to work with these foreign owned agencies, or new citizen owned agencies, and the target group of employees is foreigners, has led to a situation where jobs are given to foreigners instead of citizens.
 
Not only the citizens are losing out on jobs, the citizen owned agencies are having a tough time getting a share of the recruitment pie as their local data base with mainly local applicant CVs are not in demand by employers, local and foreign. The talk is that if one is thinking of getting a job, the chances of success are better with a foreign recruitment agency. The catch is that it is very rare that a foreign recruitment agency would want to job match a citizen. There seems to be a lot of under table practices that made it so lucrative to place foreigners than to place citizens and that made the latter not a worthwhile effort.
 
A free market system, a ‘meritocrazy’ policy that only naïve little boys and girls think will work, are working against the citizens in all areas and making them look like fools, hapless, unwanted, and with no one to turn to except to look for a taxi licence when all things failed. The failure of the govt to ignore the plight of its citizens for good jobs will be translated into negative votes for sure. The citizens may be daft but not daft to the extent that they did not know who they should vote to Parliament to look after their interests.
 
The nearly cooked citizens will feel the pain soon, other than those that are already cooked. When they start to jump out of the boiling water, things can be ugly. The lethargy, the lack of will to change the nature of things to their own advantage, the stupidity to believe that it is all their fault, that the foreigners are smarter and more deserving than them, have kept the daft Sinkies in a state of resignation and despair.
 
Either they wake up their ideas or they will be the new beggars in this super rich island of super opportunities that are going to the foreigners. Is there a conspiracy that jobs should go to foreigners, that employers rather work with foreign recruiters than the citizens to recruit foreigners? Or is it how the system has been designed and allowed to do the citizens in?
 
What price to pay for being daft and to be treated as daft even by foreigners? No one knows what is going on, really?

American war plan against China is called ‘JOAC’, pronounced joke

While China is making plans to deny the access of American warships patrolling its coastal seas, the Americans are countering this plan by a war plan called ‘JOAC’ for Joint Operational Access Concept. Obviously the Americans do not meant it to be a joke. The Chinese area access denial plan is a defensive strategy to keep the enemies away from its shores and for doing this, they are being accused to being provocative, if not, aggressive.

The Americans have been strutting their military hardware along the Yellow Sea, East China Seas, right at the door step of China and telling China, what can you do about it. And when China declared its first ADIZ in East China Sea, another defensive act, the Americans aggressively flew 2 B 52 nuclear bombers heading straight into China. Such a hostile act could easily trigger a nuclear war as the nuclear capability of the bombers cannot be ignored. China could have shot them down if they came a bit closer to the firing range of their nuclear weapons.

The arrogance and hostility of the Americans and their intent for war have been taken for granted by the West who spoke about it as if it is their right to attack anyone they like. And China’s acts to defend itself with ADIZ and area access denial missiles are read as aggressive and war mongering.

So the Americans are serious about this joke, oops, I mean JOAC. What is this plan all about? According to Geoff Dyer in an article published yesterday in the ST on his book, The Contest Of The Century: The New Era Of Competition With China, this plan is being devised to counter China’s area access denial plan to keep American warships away from Chinese soil to prevent them from launching strikes at China mainland. How it works? The plan calls for a massive strike against all the missile targets in China to disarm Chinese missiles from hitting American warships. And they made a few assumptions, 1, the Chinese would not doing anything and allow the Americans to launch the strikes without hitting back, like the cruise missile strike against China’s embassy in Belgrade. 2, it assume that the strike can be a limited war and China would not dare to launch its nuclear arsenal against the US mainland.

The probability of a massive counter attack by China and an all out nuclear war cannot be ruled out. Which country would allow another country to strike at its heartland and resist from retaliation if it can do so and has the weapons to do so? The war crazy Americans cannot be so mad to think that a massive strike against China could be done without the Chinese hitting back with all they got. They could not be more right to call their plan a joke.

While they are planning to counter the Chinese defensive strategy with a hostile and aggressive war plan, do they believe that the Chinese would stop at their defensive plan and would not be planning to counter strike should the Americans carry out their joke? This is very similar to some countries that think they would have a big advantage to have a first strike strategy without thinking that the enemy too could have the same first strike strategy against them.

Just pray the Americans are joking and continue to have more jokes up their sleeves. The idiots still think war is an option between nuclear capable super powers and are risking for war. And they are claiming that the Chinese may flirt with adventurism when they are most guilty of this act. The Americans could be adventurous against smaller and military weaker countries. They should plan to have peace with other nuclear powers if they are sane in their heads.

Kopi Level - Yellow

Four Horsemen – The Age of Decadence

A blogger in TRE recommended the Four Horsemen as a good documentary to watch. The producer Ross Ashcroft gave an analysis on the rise of civilisation and the falls of empires. It is the last stage in the decline of empires, the Age of Decadence, particularly in the USA that is most relevant to what is happening here. Why not when we are just a small replica of the American system, borrowing and copying everything American to the T? And if America is failing, the symptoms appearing there will also be here in a graduated scale.

The rise of an empire coincidentally dealt with a familiar subject called pioneers. It all began with the pioneers digging the road and paving the way for a brighter future for those that came after them. It then went through the ages of conquest, commerce, affluence, intellectual pursuit and, just before it came to an end, the age of decadence described as bread and circus.

The prominent features of the onset of decadence are as follows:

1. An undisciplined over size military that is over extending itself. This is self explanatory in what we are doing today and how cocky we have become.
2. Conspicuous display of wealth. We have seen many Ferraris and Lamborghinis and French mansions around us like the Antons and the Michaels.
3. Disparity in wealth or a big income gap. No need to elaborate when the wealth of the nation concentrates in the hands of a few families and the high incomes of top people in number of times over the low level workers are there for all to see. The people benefiting from it will tell the daft workers it is the hard truth, can’t be helped.
4. A bloated govt or over size govt. No need to explain on this, big in numbers and big in salary.
5. An obsession with sex. Funny that we have so many court cases about sex recently.
6. Debasement of currency. We used to be able to buy a semi D for $40k but now it needs $3m to $4m to get one. We could get a 5 rm HDB flat for less than $30k but we need $500k or more to get one today. The value of our money has gone bananas.

There are many other features of a decadent state like apathy, amoralism, no one cares a damn. Think Hong Lim Park when several very important issues were raised but hardly anyone bothered to attend. And housing prices kept spiralling and people said it is good. Ashcroft described it as the squandering of a generation of its inheritance. I wonder what he meant and how relevant it is in the City of Sin. One interesting comment by Ashcroft that I feel very strange and astonishing, is the glorifications of chefs in the society. Are we also glorifying our chefs too?

The Americans got rid of the Glass Steagall Act to allow the banks to do as they liked, creating money and gambling in a way that put the casinos to shame. And this is facilitated by the call for deregulations and they did, leading to the financial disaster of 2008 and the massive bailout of the banks that were too big to fall to the tune of U$8.5 trillion. This was several times the amount used to reconstruct Europe after WW2.

The decadence continues unabated after the bailout and the banking and finance bandits dug in even deeper and waiting for the big bang to come. The banks continue to gamble and cheat their clients while the stock exchange was designed for the computer traders to cheat the innocent and hapless investors. Crimes of such nature that are blatantly flouted like in a state of lawlessness by the bankers and the crooks in the financial system without anyone thinking that they were wrong, crimes sanctioned by the states and with the regulators assisting the criminals to become more efficient and bold in the plundering. They don’t even know that these acts were criminal, they did not want to know.

Ashcroft said, ‘When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it’.

How far or how deep are we in this state of decadence? All the features of a state of decadence described by Ashcroft are apparent and here with us.

What is next after the state of decadence?

Here is the link to the Four Horsemen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU&feature=youtu.be. A good 90 minute documentary.

Kopi Level - Green

How much an average Sinkie needs to live in Sin?

This is just a broad brush estimate on how much it would cost an average Sinkie to live here from birth to death, or the sum of money he needs to earn and to pay for the privilege of living in Sin City. It will only consider a few basic factors without going into nitty gritties of living.

For the first 25 years, it could range from $500k to a million to grow a child to an adult. The same amount would be needed from 65 to 80 or more during the golden years. These two phases of life will cost between $1m to $2m for each person.

For the duration of 25 years to 65, the working life, it will need something like $2.5m to $4.5m. At $1k pm for personal expenses, this will work out to about $500k for 40 years. Add in two children will be an additional $1m to $2m. The flat will cost between $500k to $1.5m. A car, at $100k per car for 10 years, it will cost $400k for 40 years.

Just using these simplified numbers, an average Sinkie will need $3.5m to $6.5m to survive in Sin for a period of 85 years. And assuming that the cost for the first 25 years is paid by the parents, it is still between $3m to $6m to get by. And where is the money coming from?

A Sinkie must make this sum in his 40 years of economically active life. This works out to be about $5k to $10k pm, using the minimum and maximum estimates. Any Sinkie earning less than $5k pm is likely to struggle all the way to survive, ceteris paribus.

Can you afford to live in Sin?

Kopi Level - Green

The revelations of the Little India riot

We have heard of brave policemen and of policemen running away from the mob. We have heard of praises and medals for bravery and brickbats for not holding the ground, and worse, policemen fleeing for safety. And the dominant view, the policemen are the law enforcers and must make a stand, face the mobsters and deal with them with force and authority. The alternative view is that the police on the ground were outnumbered and there was no need to risk life and injuries, no need to attack the mob to escalate the tension and create a nasty situation.
 
At the moment all the comments are academic as the commentators are detached from a reality, from the tense situation where personal security were at risk. And from the comfort of sitting behind a computer and punching the keyboard I thought it would be easy for Arnold Schwarzeneggar or Robocop to deal with the mob single handed. It would be a piece of cake even if the mob were illiterate villagers that were used to violence, to pelting policemen with stones and anything they could lay their hands on, to overturning and burning police cars. One thing for sure, they were not the nice school children that could be shouted down by a school teacher. It was a violent and incensed mob.
 
What would happen if the orders were not given to pull back but instead for the handful of policemen to charge at the mob before the arrival of the SOC officers is moot. There could be a few serious casualties among the men and women in blue. Did anyone suggest to the police women to charge at the mob? This sounds like the soldiers in Kota Tinggi during Confrontation who thought it was a picnic and they could take a break bathing in the river unguarded.
 
It is quite fun really to make all kinds of postulations and even gungho ideas in the comfort of an aircon room with tea and cakes to munch. The riot could throw up a few heroes like Arnold or a few policemen in black plastic bags. Who is wiser?
 
What do you think? Of course it looked quite ridiculous and malu for policemen and women running away from a mob. It would be nice if they would strut out from the ambushed ambulance with guns blazing in both hands, taking down the mobsters in their way. This would be great stuff for Hollywood or even Mediacorp. Really great for adrenalin pumping and story telling and a great opportunity missed.
 
I am still having a lot of wild imaginations on what it could have been. If only I had a machine gun crew. But these kinds of wet dreams are best for the early hours in bed. One can only 'how lian' after the event and not being there.